


When We're Gone

by sharivan



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-27
Updated: 2015-08-20
Packaged: 2018-02-10 15:00:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 5,054
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2029419
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sharivan/pseuds/sharivan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"I love you. Take care of each other," Mary tells her sons. A moment later the car engine turns over.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

A blonde woman stands in the middle of a run-down kitchen, rummaging through a faded canvas duffel. Socks, sweaters, and a beige shaving kit are tangled with canisters of salt and ammunition. The weapons she carries are hidden by her bulky coat and loose jeans. Her sons watch from across the kitchen table.

She got the call an hour before, just waited for the boys to get home from school before driving the three hours to back up Ted. "This should be a short trip," she tells them. "I'll be back in a day or two." She should be.

Her oldest boy nods, calm. Mary avoids overnight hunts during the school year. You'd never know, to see him. He accepts everything so easily, is so sure that the way they live is the only way anyone would hope to. Sam is quietly unhappy, too much like his mother for his own good.

"If you don't hear from me by Tuesday - "

"Call Uncle Bobby and Aunt Ellen," the boys respond by rote. The numbers are on the fridge, as they have been in every apartment for the past five years. The last time they called Mary had broken into a house a few towns over and had a harder time getting out undetected than she'd hoped. She came home to two tear-stained children asleep on the couch and an hour later, Ellen Harvelle banging on her door.

Mary circles around the table and hugs them, lifting Sam off the ground. Dean comes nearly to her shoulders.

"I love you. Take care of each other," Mary tells her sons. She grabs the duffel and heads out the door. A moment later the car engine turns over.

Dean grabs his brother's shoulder. "She'll be back."

***

The hunt went badly. Ted survived and neither of them ended up in a hospital, so it was hardly the worst hunt Mary had been on. Still, her ears rang and putting weight on her right leg is agonizing in a way that makes her think about permanent joint damage. She's home on time, though.

"Chinese?" There's fruit and milk in the fridge, boxes of store brand cereal and mac and cheese in the cupboards, but not much else. Standing long enough to make mac and cheese sounds like hell.

"Yeah, okay," Sam agrees. Mary calls in the order and gives Dean some money before limping to the bathroom to shower and gauge the damage. The knee's swelling, but ice tonight and bandages tomorrow should keep it under control.

The food arrives soon after she collapses on the couch with an ice pack and a beer. While the boys bicker over who gets first dibs on the lo mein Mary takes a box of beef and broccoli for herself.

"So what have you been up to?" Mary asks.

"I spelled broccoli wrong on my test," Sam answers around a mouthful of lo mein.

"Yeah?"

"I pinned John at wrestling practice," Dean says.

"Awesome! Did you two have time for your other homework?" A wobbly bookshelf stands against the wall, piled high with school books, children's folklore collections, romances, and a few more reliable bestiaries.

"Um, banshees scream before someone dies. Not everyone, just some people."

"They don't actually kill anyone, though," Dean adds.

"No, most banshees are harmless," Mary agrees.

"So why do we need to know about them?"

"Not every strange thing needs killing. You need to be able to tell the difference. Besides, you hear that scream, you'll want to know it's a banshee and not something worse."

"Did you and Dad ever hear a banshee?" Sam asks.

Mary goes still. "I heard one once, hunting with my mom. I don't think your father ever did, sweetheart."

"Oh."

"Your father wasn't a hunter, you know. Not so many chances to hear banshees scream if you don't go looking for monsters.”


	2. Chapter 2

Sam pulls a container of grapes from the fridge and scowls at the peeling linoleum that won't lie flat. Their apartments are always falling apart. At least the wiring is ok here.

"Sam," Mary calls from her bedroom, "I'm going on a hunt tomorrow. Want to come?"

"No," he tells her, a little louder than he needs to be. "I've got homework to do this weekend."

"You're graduating in a few weeks! You don't need to worry so much about homework any more." She walks into the kitchen and leans against the sink. "It sounds like vampires." As though vampires were a treat on par with action movies or peanut butter frosting.

"Yeah, mom..." He looks past her. "I don't want to go hunting this weekend. And, uh, I'm not really going to be done with school next month. I'm going to college next year." It's already May. He should have told her earlier. He's been putting it off for weeks; when Sam tried to tell her about the schools he was applying to months before, she'd looked so sad. And yelled, but that was almost normal. She never yelled at Dean, her perfect, favorite son.

"What? Since when?"

"We've talked about this. I'm going!"

"Yeah, well, we also talked about why it's a bad idea. I don't want you going off on your own for that long just yet. And you can't keep weapons in a dorm room." She's standing close to him, no longer leaning across the room.

"I won't need weapons! I think I can take a break from killing things until I get an apartment, mom."

Mary rubs at her face. "Sam. You can't - Jesus, Sam. There are no breaks! Monsters go after lots of people who aren't hunters. Monsters especially go after hunters who don't hunt anymore. You can't pretend this stuff doesn't exist, you have to be able to defend yourself."

"Just because a demon killed dad -" He stops.

"Yes!" Mary yells. "Yes, a demon killed your dad because I stopped hunting. A demon I've run into several times. You think he won't pay you a visit? You think you're different?"

"Maybe I am! I should at least get to try. It's not like I've made any deals with demons!"

Mary stares at him, jaw clenched, nostrils flared. She’s never looked at him like this; at Aunt Ellen, maybe, the last time they saw her.

"Okay." Mary grabs the keys from the top of the fridge, breathing like she can't get enough air. "Okay. We'll talk about this later. Tell your brother I'll pick him up in the morning."

She's out the door before Sam can think of anything to say. Well, fuck. It's not like any of that wasn't true. She stopped hunting for years, he can’t take a break to go to college?

They fight twice more before Sam leaves, ripping into each other's unhealed wounds. Dean drives him to Stanford. He doesn't write.


	3. Chapter 3

Mary drove down a quiet highway, her children in the backseat. It had been years since she’d driven so far, since she’d needed to go much farther than the grocery story or the bank on her own. It had been different when she was younger. There had been trips with friends into the city, once, her parents more willing than most to lend a car to their teenage daughter. She’d driven getaway when her parents didn’t want her getting up close and personal with something particularly nasty. John loved driving, and Mary loved feeling normal, another stay at home mom in the passenger seat of her husband’s car.

Sammy seemed to have finally fallen asleep, but her older child was fidgeting. “Will we be there soon?” he asked.

“Getting close,” Mary told him. If Franklin’s directions were any good, at least. 

The sun was getting low as Mary pulled into a dirt lot. She scooped Sammy out of the backseat and headed for the building, Dean close behind her. The place was almost empty, just a couple men sitting at the bar. They glanced over as she walked in, but no one seemed to surprised to see a woman with a baby in her arms and a small child. 

Mary stopped, shifting Sam so she could put a hand on Dean’s shoulder. “Could I get a beer and a soda for the kid?” she asked the dark-haired woman behind the bar. 

“No problem. You want something to eat, sweetheart?” 

“Burgers’d be great, thanks.” Mary handed the glasses to Dean one by one and headed for a table against the wall. 

“How are you doing, love?” Mary asked.

He looked up at her, eyes huge. “Fine.”

She sighed and put an arm over his shoulder. They sat in silence, Mary rocking the baby, until the dark-haired woman returned with some food.

Half an hour after they'd finished, both Mary's children grown overtired and restless, Franklin came into the roadhouse. The hunters Mary had met growing up were mostly white, whether because that’s who hunted the same things as her family or because hunters who weren’t white had to lay much lower to stay on the right side of the law. Franklin DuChamp was hardly the only black hunter in the game, but he was the only one in the bar that night.

"Good to see you, Franklin," she said as he joined them.

"You too, Mary. And what's your name?" he asked her son.

"Dean."

"Nice to meet you, Dean. I used to know your grandparents." The Campbells weren't too welcoming to other hunters, but then most hunters were suspicious, violent loners. Only an idiot would invite a strange hunter home, or ask one to watch their back. But anyone with a half-decent range got to know the other folks nearby, know when to send a job their way and listen to their stories afterward.

“Hey, Franklin.” The dark-haired woman stopped by their table. “How’re you doing?”

“I’ve been worse. You know Mary?”

“Can’t say I do.”

“Mary Campbell,” he gestured, “Ellen Harvelle.” 

“Mary Winchester these days,” Mary corrected him. It was stupid, maybe, not to go by Campbell. Stupid not to use everything she could to announce she knew what she doing. Selfish to still go by Winchester after she’d gotten John killed twice. She hadn’t been Mary Campbell for ten years.

“Nice to meet you,” Ellen said. “You want a beer, Franklin?”

“Please.” He turned back to Mary. “So what do you need? It’s been a while since I heard from you.”

“Think it’s time for me to start working again,” Mary said. Dean played with the baby, pretending he wasn’t listening. He’d need to get better at pretending.

“Ellen’s a nice girl,” Franklin said obscurely. “Gets more than her share of hunters in here. That’s why I picked it.”

No need to talk around things, then. “My husband died. Something came into my home and killed my husband.” She put her hand over his, careful her bracelet of holy signs brushed his skin. No sense taking chances. “Not working doesn’t feel so safe anymore.”

Franklin frowned, but he didn’t say anything. Didn’t tell Mary she should have already known that, should have always known that, that every goddamn hunter could have told her ignoring monsters didn’t mean they’d ignore you. It was kinder than she deserved. She pulled her hands back.

“Came out all this way just to tell me you’re hunting again?” he asked.

“Just thought it was time we caught up,” Mary said. “I haven’t been paying much attention the last few years, what’ve I missed?”

They talked for awhile, Ellen joining in as she dropped by the table with another beer for Franklin. People had died or retired, others taken their places. Nothing had really changed. There were no signs of anything out of the ordinary. No suggestion anyone was paying attention to the demon but her.

Franklin hugged her when she got up to go. “I’m sorry, Mary. I know this wasn’t what you wanted.”

She laughed. “No one gets into this because they love it. Why would I be different?”  

***

A few weeks later there’s a letter in Mary’s PO box in Lawrence. It says there’s a gun that can kill demons for good. Mary packs up the kids, their toys, and her weapons. They drive west.


	4. Earlier

“I’m sorry, ma’am.”

She nodded distantly. Of course they couldn’t save John; he was dead the moment he’d walked into the room. Or the moment she had, maybe. 

“My children. I need to…” He must have said something, but it hardly mattered. She gathered up her children and walked to the car, a little out of the way of the firetrucks. 

Later, she could never remember how she got into the car. She’d run out of the house in her nightgown, not stopping for shoes or a coat. Was it unlocked? Did she get a cop to open it up, find the presence of mind to lie about a key in the car or just forget hotwiring wasn’t an entirely respectable skill? It didn’t matter. She put the kids in the backseat and drove out of town, down dark gravel roads to a low shack in the woods.

“Where are we going?”

“Inside,” Mary answered. “Come on.”

Inside was dark and cold, not a place to take a child in the middle of the night. Mary felt for a flashlight and turned it on. The walls were lined with battered shelves full of boxes and lumpy tarp-wrapped shapes. She handed Sammy to Dean and rested the flashlight on a shelf, picking up a heavy bag. “Stand in the middle of the room,” Mary instructed, tearing a corner of the bag and pouring out a line of salt around her children.

“Mom, what are - ?”

“Salt keeps us safe,” she said. “Remember the story about the little boy and the haunted house?”

“…Yes.”

“Something bad came into our house and hurt your father.” Mary handed over the flashlight and another pack of batteries. “Stay there, I’ll be right back.” They weren’t dressed for the cold, but there were blankets in the car. 

Her sons wrapped up, Mary looked in box after box before hauling one into the salt circle with her. She took off the lid.

“Mom?”

Mary laid a six-inch knife beside her and took back Sammy, putting an arm around Dean. “I won’t let anything hurt you,” she promised.


	5. Chapter 5

"What the hell are you _thinking_ , Mary?"

"I have to do this. I'm going." The table between them is crowded with books and beer bottles. The pages of the book Bobby was looking through have shifted without his hand keeping his place. They pay the books and bottles no real attention, just enough to keep from knocking them over as they gesture at each other as though their jerky movements can convince the other when their words fail.

"You really don't have to. You don't have to leave your kids here for weeks and go off to do something suicidal _again_."

"Oh, you think I should take them with me?"

"Goddamn it, Mary."

"I've been doing this longer than you, Bobby, I know what I'm doing." They're half-shouting at each other. The walls of Bobby's house are thin and old; if the children were awake, they could hear every word.

He looks at her. They've had this argument, or ones awfully like it, more than once. Bobby tells Mary to be careful, not to go out of her way to run into danger. Mary does as she pleases.

"What's going to happen to the kids if you don't make it back?" he asks.

"I know you and Ellen will keep them safe. But don't worry so much, Bobby. I'll be fine."

"Right. Hunting down crossroads demons, that's nothing to worry about. You do it all the time, yeah?" To hear Mary you'd think it was as routine as dealing with an unquiet ghost.

"I'll be fine," she insists. "Even without any help from your useless books - you should try to get some more on demonology."

Bobby snorts. "You've been doing this so much longer than me, don't see why you don't have your own damn books."

They return to their reading. In the morning Mary is gone.

***

"And salt?"

"Ghosts and demons. We're not _babies_ , Uncle Bobby."

"Uh-huh." Bobby leans back in his chair. "Not sure why your mom wanted me to go over this with you if you know it all already."

Dean rolls his eyes. "Just because Sammy said werewolves wouldn't cross a salt line..."

"Shut up!"

"Okay, okay." This is useless. He's not as experienced as Rufus or Mary, sure, but he knows a thing or two about monsters. Right? "Get out of here."

The screen door slams on their way out. Bobby pulls a bag of corn from the fridge and shucks the ears by the front door, sets the pressure cooker for ten pounds. That night they eat hamburgers and corn, faces greasy with melted butter.

Two more days pass before they hear from Mary. The boys ask grisly questions and ignore him in fidgety restlessness by turns. They fight constantly. Bobby takes them to a lake, hoping they'll wear themselves out and calm the fuck down. He's almost sure Sam asks Dean about sea monsters. They're quieter on the drive home at least.

Mary doesn't say much when she finally calls. The boys talk to her first, restrained until she tells them she's alright, then talking over each other about the junkyard and the lake and are there _really_ wendigos in the forests north of there?

"Any luck?" Bobby asks when he finally gets the phone.

"I haven't found one yet, but it shouldn't be long."

"Yeah, well. Don't get yourself killed."

Her laugh is almost a sigh. "I'll do my best."

***

She walks in a week later, thinner than when she left. "Fucking demon wouldn't tell me anything," she says. "It laughed when I put the Colt to its head and took off as soon as it got bored. I took the poor girl it was using to the hospital but I don't think she'll make it."

 

They spend the next few days calling everyone they know, asking about demons.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It wasn't the first time Bill went hunting with Mary. Ellen's husband, he liked to keep his hunts closer to home and Mary preferred to hunt alone, to leave both colleagues and competitors out of her one-sided grudge.

It wasn't the first time Bill went hunting with Mary. Ellen's husband, he liked to keep his hunts closer to home and Mary preferred to hunt alone, to leave both colleagues and competitors out of her one-sided grudge. But once in a while Mary would pull in just in time to back Bill up one something local; would drop off Sam and Dean for a few days, talking too casually about her latest suicidal plan, until Bill and Ellen frowned at each other and decided they couldn't let her go alone.

Sometimes Ellen was the one to go, but she preferred to guard her safe places against danger instead of chasing it down out in the world. Hunting with Mary hadn't changed her mind. So when Mary said she'd be gone a few days, just looking into a devil's gate she'd heard of, nothing active just then, Bill had sighed and offered to go with her. If Mary was foolhardy at the best of times she lost all sense of self-preservation given the chance to inconvenience a demon, any demon. Ellen reminded herself that Bill was careful and Mary knew her business, so it was a safer hunt than many. That argument became less reassuring on the fifth day of what was supposed to be a four-day hunt. 

Mary came into the Roadhouse mid-morning of the fifth day, dried blood staining the thigh of her jeans and road rash on her forearms. She didn't call for the boys, didn't look over her shoulder and wait for Bill. Instead she looked at the ground and said, "Ellen, I need you outside."

***

Mary stood at a payphone outside the first Conoco north of the Roadhouse.

"Bobby," she said. "Bill Harvelle's dead. You should check on Ellen and Jo."

She glances at the car, Sam and Dean still quiet in the backseat. It's not the relief it should be.

"Mary? What the hell happened?"

It's a question she can't quite answer.

"A hunt went bad. Can you head down to the Roadhouse?"

Silence on the line. "Mary. Wouldn't she rather you be there?"

Usually, sure. Ellen and Bobby were friendly but not friends, maybe not the first person the other would call in times of personal crisis for anything other than purely professional help. But Bill had died on a hunt of Mary's and Ellen had asked if she recognized the demon who killed him. She hadn't, she _hadn't_ but once again there was a demon and Mary was alive and someone else wasn't. It was where all her choices took her, no matter what they were.

Ellen hadn't actually accused her of anything but they were both getting too loud, too close, and the kids were watching, and Mary was not who Ellen wanted around as she mourned the death of her husband.

"I can't," she said, and hung up.

***

The thing was, he paid attention. He spent his summers in motel rooms and the houses of their mom's friends, which made for badly received essays come September but was educational in other ways.

While Mary was Dean's mother and his lodestone he'd heard the things people said about her; most of her friends couldn't go more than a day without yelling about reasonable risks and the way she couldn't judge them. It never seemed that important but then she'd never come back with a dead hunter in the backseat before.

Mary returned from the payphone and started the car. As they pulled out of the gas station she asked, "What can we learn from this?"

It didn't seem like a question that had a good answer.

"Hunting is...dangerous?" Sam offered.

"It certainly is."

"It's important to know what you're dealing with," Dean said. And Mary _laughed_. 

"You know," she told them, "a long time ago, before you were born, a demon came to town."

This was not a new story.

"The demon killed my mom and dad and boyfriend. And then it told me that if I just _made a deal_ it would give me back my boyfriend, would give me the life I always wanted."

Although this part is less familiar.

"I said yes," she continued. "I said yes and I married your father and pretended the world was just and a demon came into our house to threaten my children and kill my husband. And now I hunt demons so that won't happen to other people, and your uncle Bill is dead."

Sam was curled in on himself like Mary wouldn't ask what he was thinking if she couldn't make eye contact in the rear view mirror. Dean envied him.

"One life lesson here," Mary said, "is to avoid making deals with demons. They play down the cost."

She turned on the radio and they drove north.


	7. Chapter 7

It was strange at first. Sam had a roommate and orientations and parties, was almost never alone. His roommate grew up with his mother and stepfather, had gone to the same school district his own life. Brian looked too long at his single scuffed duffel bag full of clothes and Sam made sure he never was the smaller bag of knives and salt and holy water. He wasn’t going to use it but couldn't imagine leaving it behind.

Sam went to class and met up with friends and never once had to cancel because of a family emergency, never had to leave homework unfinished so he could do more pressing research or spend an evening driving backup. There was so much _time_.

**

Brian went home for Thanksgiving. People asked too many questions about why Sam stayed on campus, so he told them the break was too short for it to be worth the trip.

**

The next year Sam spent Thanksgiving with Jess’s family. He’d learned how to tell the story by then. It was important not to say anything too damning, nothing that would get too much attention. Just enough so that people didn’t jump to talk him out of his teenage rebellion. Jess’s parents looked disapproving when he talked about his family but seemed to like him well enough.

When Sam was back at college he found a letter with a PO Box in Indiana as its return address. He didn’t recognize it, but Mary’s handwriting was distinctive. He slid it into the back of a folder unopened.

***

By his junior year people stopped looking at him like he was just pretending to be a person, and doing a shitty job of it. Sam never was comfortable on either side of that look. He carried a pocket knife and went months without getting out his hunting knives. He learned to read newspapers without circling anything that sounded preternaturally off - exclamation marks next to dubious reporting were another story. He didn’t chase after evil and it didn’t chase after him.

Then he woke up to a sound in the night and viscerally regretted all the time he'd spent expecting to be safe. He slipped out of bed to face what came into his home. The thing that broke in was more familiar than any monster. Dean smirked at Jess and Sam was about to kick him out when he said, “Mom’s on a hunting trip and she hasn’t been home in a few days."

***  
Jess was confused but understanding. Sam couldn’t manage to explain why he didn’t want to go to either Jess or Dean. Not even when he was only talking to one of them at a time, not worried about the other listening in. Of course Mary was his mother. Of course he wanted her to be safe. But he didn’t want to see her. He didn’t want to be the sort of person who could find or help her. He certainly didn’t want her praise for coming back to who she thought he needed to be, no more than he wanted her criticism for trying to be someone else in the first place. There were a packet of unopened letters in a pile of old class notes - maybe this was just her next attempt to get ahold of him. Sam was pretty sure she’d break into his apartment herself before going to all the trouble, though. Dean was still only good at lying to people who didn’t know him and he was clearly worried.

They dealt with the ghost who hurt her children in life. They didn't talk about Mary. Dean took Sam home, glad to be back, glad to be who he was again. But Jess was on the ceiling, sweet Jess, who never knew about any of this. Who never got to make a decision because she didn’t have the right information.

After Dean got him outside they sat on the trunk of the Impala and stared at the smoldering building. There was a warm arm around Sam’s shoulder and he didn’t want to think just then because there was no…Jess was dead. And maybe that meant Mom was right and he had no business leaving, and maybe that meant he was right and if he hadn’t gone with Dean she would be fine. He couldn’t decide which was more likely but it didn’t matter. It was his fault either way.

***

He couldn’t stand seeing Jess’s parents at the funeral. They should have blamed him but of course they didn’t. They didn’t have any idea what happened.

Sam and Dean chased Mary without a break. Dean looked at him sometimes like when they were younger, like he doesn’t understand, like people at Stanford did until Sam learned how to blend in. Every hunt felt more important now. He’d never see Jess again, he’d never be a lawyer. He’d just kill whatever he needed to so that didn’t happen to anyone else. If he was grim and single-minded Sam doesn’t see why that was a problem for Dean.

After weeks of this a call came in on the cell phone. Sam answered, expecting another request for help.

“Sam, is that you?"

“…Mom?” She wasn't dead. Of course she wasn't dead.

Dean came over to stand in front of him, not quite close enough to hear Mary.

"Sammy, I am so sorry about Jess. That should...that should never have happened."

If Sam breathed out unevenly no one commented on it. It shouldn't have happened and it wouldn't if only Sam...

"I know," he said.

"What? Sweetie, no! I've been hunting this son of a bitch for twenty years. You didn't do anything wrong."

It wasn't - he hadn't really pictured this conversation because he'd never wanted to be in the position to have it. But of course he had thought about it sometimes, how she'd apologize, agree that he'd made the right choice to leave. It had never seemed terribly likely, though.

"But Sam, it was your place the demon came to, not mine or Dean's. And the first time it was in your nursery. We need to change our plans - it might've been focused on me before but now it's interested in you."

Sam's hands shook over the phone. "What? What does it... why?"

"I'm working on it. Can I talk to your brother?"

Sam pushed the phone at Dean and fell back onto the motel bed.

"What?" Dean asks. "Sure, we'll check it out. Is there somewhere we can meet - yes, ma'am. Okay." He flipped the phone shut.

"There's what looks like a cockatrice in West Virginia. Mom needs us to check it out."

"And she's okay?" Sam asked skeptically.

"Yeah, just working on the demon thing right now. She'll be in touch soon. Come on, let's get out of here."

Sam sat quietly in the passenger seat, not sulking - no matter how Dean might describe it - but certainly thinking about demons, and fixation, and guilt.

Halfway across the country Mary sighed over a grimoire. It was a failure of parenting, surely, to raise a child to make the exact mistakes you had. But she had been alone and selfish and scared. She was coldly glad that Jess was still dead, that neither of her sons had gone running to a crossroads to change that. Her children were together. And they would get the chance to get things right if it killed her.


End file.
